The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Conventional multiple contact connectors typically include a plurality of contacts and an insulating housing having several openings or inserting slots on a rear face that is opposite to a front face, which couples to a corresponding connector. Some connectors need to be protected against environmental influences such as dirt and moisture. As such, sealing may be provided at the openings in the rear face of the housing in the form of a block or mat seal, which is fabricated from an elastic material and includes a plurality of openings through which electrical contacts are plugged through or pierced through when assembling the electrical connector.
However, the mat seal configuration may be problematic for very thin cables having a diameter that is substantially smaller than transverse dimensions of the contact, because the mat seal openings can only be stretched to a certain extent when inserting the contacts. Moreover, there is a risk that the mat seal is damaged when the contacts are pierced through. This is particularly problematic if the outer dimensions of the contacts are substantially larger than the cable diameter, if the contact has sharp features, or if the contact is stamped so that the edges of the contact may have burrs which can damage portions of the mat seal that come into contact with these edges. Cuts and tears in the mat seal compromise its sealing performance.
Instead of providing a single common mat seal for all contacts, each contact may be individually fitted with a cable seal before inserting the contact into the housing. This is particularly advantageous for very small cable insulation diameters because the contact itself does not need to pass through the cable seal aperture.
Typical cable sealed connectors require a loose-piece cavity plug for any cavities that are not used in a connector. These loose-piece plugs must be assembled to an optimal position or depth in each unused cavity to prevent water pooling or to prevent the plug from falling out of the cavity. It may be difficult to achieve this optimal position in a wire harness assembly, which can lead to quality issues if the plug falls out.
It is possible to “flash over” connector cavities instead of using cavity plugs. However, this requires physical changes to the mold cores and connector production must be stopped to perform the change-over in the mold tooling. Furthermore, some cavities cannot be flashed over as they contain necessary features for terminal position assurance (TPA) locking that requires tool access.
Accordingly, while such conventional connector assemblies work for their intended purpose, it is desirable to provide an improved system for sealing unused cavities of a connector assembly that utilizes individual cable seals as opposed to a mat seal.